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As local authorities in northeastern Syria announce the discovery of new mass graves belonging to the victims of Islamic State in Raqqa, families whose loved ones disappeared during the group’s control over the region hope they might finally get some answers.  The First Responders, a rescue and recovery team in northeastern Syria, earlier this month announced finding a mass grave in the western outskirt of Raqqa’s Farusiya, raising the number of discovered sites to five this year. Raqqa SyriaFollowing the announcement and the recovery of 16 bodies from the grave, the families of the victims are calling on authorities to prioritize a speedy identification process of the remains.   “The coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) must support The First Responders team with technical support so they would be able to verify the identities of the bodies found in mass graves and under the rubble of buildings that were destroyed during the battle to defeat IS in the city of Raqqa,” said Ensaf Nasser who has been looking for her husband since IS kidnapped him in 2014.  Nasser’s husband, Foad Ahmed el-Mohamed, was a local journalist taking pictures of wounded civilians at Aisha Hospital in Deir el-Zour city when IS militants broke in and took him away. She has since relentlessly perused threads leading to the whereabouts of her husband, without much luck.Foad Ahmed el-Mohamed, was a local journalist in Deir el-Zour. Here holding a twin born in the hospital he used to work at in 2014. (Photo courtesy Ensaf Nasser)Nasser told VOA she has learned that the extremist group accused her husband of infidelity because he advocated for a secular and democratic state instead of a caliphate. He was also accused of breaking their strict Sunni codes by marrying Nasser, who was a follower of Syria’s Druze sect, and naming his son after the Argentinian Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.  “I have knocked at every door and followed every lead through official channels or personal connections, but I still have no evidence of what happened to him,” Nasser said. While still hoping to find him alive, she added that if he is found dead, she can at least find closure and honor his memory.  Islamic State kidnapped thousands of civilians, mainly activists, to hush any opposing voice as it prepared to impose its control in 2013, Human Rights Watch said in a report earlier this year. The watchdog said that many victims have vanished during IS expansion in 2014.   The Syrian Network for Human Rights has registered 8,648 cases of kidnapped people, including 319 children and 225 women. Local authorities suspect that many of the missing have likely been killed by IS and buried in graves across the mostly desert terrain of eastern Syria.   Raqqa Civil Council said it has found 28 mass graves since defeating IS’s physical caliphate in 2019. The sites allegedly contain about 6,300 bodies and belong mostly to people executed by IS. A member of The First Responders team in Raqqa seals a bag containing a body recovered from a mass graves. The exhuming operation use primitive means, as the team lacks technology to analyze the remains. (Photo: Osama al-Khalaf)Location and recoveryThe First Responders told VOA they have found some of the graves after receiving information from local residents about human remains. The team will begin exhuming the remains following an investigation and verification process.The First Responders was established in September 2018 by Raqqa Civil Council to exhume the mass graves and as an emergency response team. In 2020 alone, the team found five mass graves and exhumed about 300 bodies.   “Once a body is found, the team will record the basic information on the date and location of the recovery, sex, apparent cause of death and any personal belongings. The recovered human body will be assigned an ID number and preserved in another location,” said Osama al-Khalaf, a spokesperson for Raqqa Civil Council.  Al-Khalaf said that if a body is identified, it will be handed over to its family for a proper burial. For those not identified, local authorities have dedicated two graveyards outside Raqqa, he added.    “The work to exhume and identify the human remains is done by primitive tools like shovels, and they lack equipment to analyze the bodies’ DNA,” he said.  Local authorities say they need international support and technical assistance to properly identify victims and preserve the bodies as evidence of IS crimes. Families’ pleasActivists supporting relatives of the victims say the families are growing weary over officials’ reluctance to share with them any information on the fate of the discovered graves. They say families deserve to know if IS prisoners have been interrogated about the fate of the disappeared, especially as some of the detained foreign jihadists are repatriated to their countries while others flee northeast Syria.  Laila Kiki, executive director of the Syria Campaign and an advocate of the families, told VOA that local authorities are yet to establish a formal system to communicate with the victims’ families. She said the authorities needed to make information-sharing a priority.  “One of the main demands of our campaign is to create a mechanism of communication between the families and the authorities on the ground. Currently, there is no two-way communication between the families and local authorities in northeastern Syria,” said Kiki, adding that the international community also needed to step in to help in the process.    “It is important for the families to get the answers they need. And it is important for the international community and the U.S.-led coalition to take the demands of the families seriously and to interrogate IS fighters. IS has impacted every Syrian family, and we need answers from those involved,” she said.
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Increased security measures are not stopping cyber operatives from looking for ways to break into critical U.S. voting systems, according to officials charged with safeguarding the nation’s Nov. 3 presidential election. But exactly who is behind the ongoing efforts remains unclear. “Election systems, like IT systems generally, are being scanned, are being targeted, are being researched for vulnerabilities,” Matt Masterson, the Department of Homeland Security’s senior election security adviser, said Tuesday during a virtual event on election security hosted by Auburn University’s McCrary Institute. “What keeps me up at night is, is there something we’re not seeing? Is there something we’re not tracking?” he said.  FILE – Senior Cybersecurity Adviser at the Department of Homeland Security Matthew Masterson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 22, 2019.U.S. officials have been preparing for new attacks on voting systems since 2016, when Russian-linked actors targeted all 50 states, managing to access voter registration databases in a handful of them. As part of that effort, officials have been working to install cyber intrusion detection sensors across the country, now allowing all states and more than 2,500 local jurisdictions to get real-time threat information. So far, the effort seems to be paying off.   “We haven’t seen cyberattacks to date this year on voter registration databases or on any systems involved in primary voting,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said last week at a virtual conference hosted by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “To our knowledge, no foreign government has attempted to tamper with U.S. vote counts.” Indirect threatsBut Masterson warned U.S. adversaries may still be looking for a way into critical systems to meddle with the upcoming presidential election. “While we have no evidence of direct targeting of election infrastructure by nation states, we know and continue to see reports of scanning,” he said. There are also concerns that cyber actors looking to interfere with Election Day voting will launch an indirect attack, perhaps using ransomware to take down systems that could create difficulties, even though they are not directly involved in the election process. “We see cascading impacts where internet is lost, connectivity to websites is lost,” Masterson said.  State and local officials are also being targeted, with cyber actors using spear-phishing and social engineering as ways to get passwords or other information that could give them access to critical systems. Disinformation campaigns Even so, some state election officials say thanks to the ongoing efforts of federal and state authorities, they are much better prepared than they were in 2016. “There is no doubt that we are in a tremendously better situation now, today, than we were during those elections,” said David Stafford, supervisor of elections for Escambia County, Florida. “We know who to call if something happens.” “Unfortunately, the threat has grown along with us,” he added. Some state officials remain uneasy about the possibility that where efforts to hack the U.S. election may fail, ongoing disinformation campaigns could succeed. “I do worry about in those last couple of days and on Election Day,” said Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who like Masterson and Stafford, spoke at the Auburn University event. “I keep telling people don’t click retweet,” she said. “It’s so easy to perpetuate. And of course, that’s what our foreign adversaries, that’s what our domestic adversaries, that’s what they want us to do to undermine confidence in the election.” 
 
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A spokesman for European Council President Charles Michel says a summit of European Union leaders scheduled for Thursday and Friday has been postponed, after Michel was forced to go into COVID-19 quarantine following contact with an infected security guard.  EU council spokesman Barend Leyts tweeted that Michel learned on Tuesday that a security officer, with whom he was in close contact early last week, tested positive for COVID-19. The @eucopresident has decided to postpone the special European Council meeting that was planned for 24 and 25 September to 1 and 2 October #EUCO— Barend Leyts (@BarendLeyts) September 22, 2020Leyts said the EU council president is tested regularly, and as recently as Monday tested negative for COVID-19. But Michel plans to follow Belgium’s COVID-19 regulations and is going into isolation. The EU is headquartered in Brussels. The summit, now scheduled for Oct. 1-2, will focus on a variety of issues ranging from Brexit negotiations, to climate change, to the tensions between Greece and Turkey over energy rights on the eastern Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus. Final approval for sanctions against Belarus regarding the crackdown following the country’s contested election last month is also set to be a focus. Michel, a former Belgian prime minister, spent much of the past week in shuttle diplomacy over the Turkey issue, including trips to Cyprus, the Greek island of Lesbos and Athens. 
 
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The woman accused of sending a ricin-laced letter to U.S. President Donald Trump will appear in court Tuesday, according to law enforcement officials. Pascale Ferrier, 53, of Quebec was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials Sunday at the Peace Bridge, which connects Buffalo, a city in New York state, with Fort Erie in Ontario, Canada, according to U.S. court documents. The letter addressed to Trump was intercepted at a facility that processes mail addressed to the president. It tested positive for ricin, the AP reported. FILE – Pascale Ferrier appears in a jail booking photograph taken after her arrest by the Mission Police Department in Mission, Texas, March 13, 2019.Ferrier is also suspected of sending ricin-filled letters to police in Texas, according to a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mount Police. “We believe a total of six letters were sent: one to the White House and five to Texas,” Cpl. Charles Poirier, of the RCMP’s Quebec division, told CBC News. This was not her first brush with authorities, according to an AP report. In March 2019, she was arrested in Mission, Texas, for having a fake driver’s license and possessing an unlicensed gun, according to the CBC.  The charges were dismissed, but she did spend 20 days in jail, which is when authorities discovered she had overstayed her visa, the CBC reported. She was then deported back to Canada. Ricin, a poison found naturally in castor beans, is deadly, with as little as 500 micrograms being lethal. There is no antidote. Ferrier was expected to make her first court appearance Tuesday afternoon in Buffalo. 
 
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Saudi Arabia, the most powerful Arab nation and home to Islam’s holiest sites, has made its official position on the region’s longest-running conflict clear: Full ties between the kingdom and Israel can only happen when peace is reached with the Palestinians.
Yet state-backed Saudi media and clerics are signaling change is already underway with Israel — something that can only happen under the directives of the country’s powerful heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The divergent messages on the possibility of Saudi ties with Israel reflect what analysts and insiders say is a schism between how the 35-year-old prince and his 84-year-old father, King Salman, view national interests.  
“It’s no secret there’s a generational conflict,” said New York-based Rabbi Marc Schneier, who serves as an advisor to Bahrain’s king and has held talks in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to promote stronger ties with Jews and Israel.  
Gulf capitals have been increasingly looking to Israel as an ally to defend against common rival Iran amid quiet concerns about the direction of U.S. foreign policy and the uncertainty around the upcoming presidential election. But it’s not only countering Iran that’s brought Israel and Arab states closer in recent years.  
The rabbi said the former Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Prince Khalid bin Salman, told him that the top priority of his brother, the crown prince, is reforming the Saudi economy.
“He said these exact words: ‘We will not be able to succeed without Israel.’ So for the Saudis, it’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of ‘when.’ And there’s no doubt that they will establish relations with Israel,” Schneier said.
Prominent Saudi royal, Prince Turki al-Faisal, insists “any talk of a rift between the king and the crown prince is mere speculation.”
“We’ve seen none of that,” said the prince, who served for years as head of intelligence and briefly as ambassador to the U.S.  
Analysts and observers say Saudi Arabia is unlikely to formalize ties with Israel as long as King Salman wields power. While the king has handed off day-to-day control of Saudi affairs to his son, he has stepped in on occasion to intervene and even push back with statements in support of the Palestinians.  
In a phone call with President Donald Trump on Sept. 6, King Salman repeated his commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency. The initiative offers Israel normal ties with Arab states in return for Palestinian statehood on territory Israel captured in 1967 — a deal that starkly contradicts the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan.
Still, the crown prince has bucked tradition with an unprecedented assertiveness. Prince Mohammed is also eager to reset ties with the U.S. in the aftermath of the killing of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
When the White House announced last month the United Arab Emirates and Israel agreed to establish full diplomatic ties — a move matched by Bahrain  weeks later — Saudi Arabia refrained from criticizing the deal or hosting summits condemning the decision, despite Palestinian requests to do so.
The Palestinians have slammed the agreements as a “betrayal of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian cause,” but government-controlled Saudi media hailed them as historic and good for regional peace.
The kingdom also approved the use of Saudi airspace for Israeli flights to the UAE, a decision announced the day after Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, met with Prince Mohammed in Riyadh. Kushner has been pushing Arab states to normalize ties with Israel.
Prince Mohammed was quoted in The Atlantic  during his most recent visit to the U.S. in April 2018 saying Israel is a big economy and “there are a lot of interests we share with Israel.” He said Palestinians and Israelis have the right to their own land, before adding there has to be a peace agreement to assure stability and to have normal relations.
His comments were interpreted as support for the eventual establishment of full ties between the kingdom and Israel, which would annihilate what’s left of the Arab consensus that recognition of Israel can only come after the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Most telling, however, was the Sept. 11 announcement that the tiny-island nation of Bahrain was establishing ties with Israel. Analysts say the move could not have happened without Saudi approval.
It strongly suggested Saudi Arabia is open to the idea of formal ties with Israel, said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“It tells me they are willing to look at this themselves in the future, possibly,” he said. “There is a sense that this might be a very good move for Saudi Arabia, but they don’t want it to be an expression of Saudi weakness. They want to make sure it’s an expression of or a contributor to Saudi strength.”
Prince Turki says Arab states should demand a high price for normalizing ties with Israel. He said Israel remains “the stumbling block in all of these efforts.”
“My view is that if you take a sounding now of Saudi positions on Palestine … you see more than 90% of the population as supporting the official position of Saudi Arabia that there must be a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital,” Prince Turki told The Associated Press.
Raghida Dergham, a longtime Arab columnist and co-chair with Prince Turki of the Beirut Institute Summit in Abu Dhabi, said younger generations in the Middle East want normality rather than a confiscation of ambitions and dreams.  
“They want solutions not a perpetuation of rejection,” said Dergham, whose Beirut Institute e-policy circles have tackled questions about the future of the region and its youth.  
When the UAE-Israel deal was announced in August, the top trending hashtag on Twitter in Saudi Arabia was against normalization with Israel. Still, public criticism in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain has largely been muted, in part because these governments suppress free speech.
“It is very hard to get accurate data, even when polling people,” said Yasmine Farouk, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  
Farouk said public opinion on Israel in Saudi Arabia is diverse and complex, with opinions varying among different age groups and among liberals and conservatives. She said there is an effort to prepare the Saudi public for change and to shape public debate around Israel.  
As Saudi Arabia prepares to mark its 90th National Day on Wednesday, clerics across the country were directed to deliver sermons about the importance of obeying the ruler to preserve unity and peace.  
Earlier this month, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, delivered another state-backed sermon on the importance of dialogue in international relations and kindness to non-Muslims, specifically mentioning Jews.  
He concluded by saying the Palestinian cause must not be forgotten, but his words caused a stir on social media, with many seeing the remarks as further evidence of the groundwork being laid for Saudi-Israeli ties.
The English-language Saudi daily, Arab News, which has been featuring op-eds by rabbis, changed its social media banner on Twitter this past Friday to say “Shana Tova,” the Jewish New Year greeting. 
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Storm surge and rainfall combined Tuesday to bring more flooding along the Texas coast after Tropical Storm Beta made landfall, threatening areas that have already seen their share of damaging weather during a busy hurricane season.
The storm made landfall late Monday just north of Port O’Connor, Texas. Early Tuesday, Beta was 35 miles (56 kilometers) north northwest of the city with maximum winds of 40 mph (64 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm was moving toward the northwest near 3 mph (4 kilometers) and is expected to stall inland over Texas.
“We currently have both storm surge and rainfall going on right now,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Amaryllis Cotto in Galveston, Texas.
Cotto said 6-12 inches (15-30 centimeters) of rain has fallen in the area, with isolated amounts of up to 18 inches (45 centimeters). Dangerous flash flooding is expected through Wednesday, Cotto said.
Beta was the ninth named storm that made landfall in the continental U.S. this year. That tied a record set in 1916, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. It also was the first time a Greek letter named storm made landfall in the continental U.S.
Forecasters ran out of traditional storm names on Friday, forcing the use of the Greek alphabet for only the second time since the 1950s.
Beta will move inland over southeastern Texas through Wednesday and then over Louisiana and Mississippi on Wednesday night through Friday, and the biggest unknown from Beta was how much rainfall it could produce. Beta was expected to weaken into a depression, but flash flooding was possible in Arkansas and Mississippi as the system moves farther inland.
Earlier predictions of up to 20 inches (51 centimeters) in some areas were downgraded Monday to up to 15 inches (38 centimeters).
Forecasters and officials reassured residents Beta was not expected to be another Hurricane Harvey or Tropical Storm Imelda. Harvey in 2017 dumped more than 50 inches (127 centimeters) of rain on Houston, causing $125 billion in damage in Texas. Imelda, which hit Southeast Texas last year, was one of the wettest cyclones on record.
Storm surge up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) was forecast from Port Aransas to Sabine Pass in Texas. In Galveston, an island city southeast of Houston, there was already some street flooding Monday from rising tides and part of a popular fishing pier collapsed due to strong waves.
Farther south on the Texas coast, Maria Serrano Culpepper along with her two daughters and dogs left their home in Magnolia Beach near Matagorda Bay on Sunday night.  
Culpepper said she didn’t want to be trapped in her home, three blocks from the beach, with wind, rain and possibly no electricity. She and her family evacuated to a friend’s home in nearby Victoria.  
Culpepper said her home should be fine as it’s on stilts 13 feet (4 meters) off the ground and was built to withstand strong storms.
“I’m feeling OK now. I had two nights without sleeping because I was worried about (Beta) being a Category 1 hurricane. I calmed down when the storm lost power,” said Culpepper, who works as an engineer at a nearby chemical plant.  
On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 29 Texas counties ahead of Beta’s arrival.  
Beta is forecast to dump heavy rain on the southwestern corner of Louisiana three weeks after the same area got pounded by Hurricane Laura. The rainfall and storm surge prompted Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards to declare a state of emergency.
In Lake Charles, Mayor Nic Hunter worried about Beta’s rainfall could set back efforts in his Louisiana community to recover after Laura, which damaged about 95% of the city’s 30,000 structures. Hunter said the worry of another storm was “an emotional and mental toll for a lot of our citizens.”
Parts of the Alabama coast and Florida Panhandle were still reeling from Hurricane Sally, which roared ashore Wednesday, causing at least two deaths. Two Boston-based disaster modeling firms figured Sally caused about $2 billion in privately insured losses from wind and storm surge. Karen Clark & Company estimated losses at $2 billion, while AIR Worldwide said they were between $1 and $3 billion. The estimates don’t include uninsured losses, the National Flood Insurance Program claims or damage to offshore property, like oil rigs.
Hurricane Teddy was about 295 miles (475 kilometers) northeast of Bermuda Monday night as it heads toward Nova Scotia. It had maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (160 kph) while moving north at 25 mph (40 kph) and away from the wealthy British territory, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was expected to weaken and become a strong post-tropical cyclone before reaching Nova Scotia on Wednesday.  
The government closed all air and sea ports, schools and government offices for the second time in a week. Hurricane Paulette made landfall in Bermuda on Sept. 14, knocking down trees and leaving thousands without power.
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The United Nations marked the 75th anniversary of its founding on Monday, amid a global pandemic and other serious challenges that the U.N. secretary-general said highlight the urgency for stronger international cooperation. VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer has more.Produced by: Jesusemen Oni   
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Ethiopia has begun circulating new currency notes to combat monetary crimes.  Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced Monday the release of the birr in denominations of 10, 50 and 100. The East African country also introduced its first 200 birr note. Ahmed hopes the new currency will also boost the inflation riddled economy impacted partly by the coronavirus pandemic. Ethiopians have three months to exchange old notes with the new ones. Authorities believe the new design and security features on the new birr note will prevent counterfeiting.  Banks had urged the government to demonetize, citing money circulating outside the banking system has worsened the liquidity problems banks are facing.  Ethiopia last changed its currency two decades ago at the end of the Ethiopian-Eritrean civil war. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump met at the White House on Monday with one of the five women on his list to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to sources.  The 87-year-old liberal icon died last Friday after a lengthy battle with cancer. Trump said he would announce his nominee after funeral services for her later this week.  The president mentioned Amy Coney Barrett by name, along with Barbara Lagoa, as he spoke to reporters before boarding his Marine One helicopter on the South Lawn. He did not confirm meeting with Barrett.  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a law professor at Notre Dame University, poses in an undated photograph obtained from Notre Dame University, Sept. 19, 2020.Later in remarks in Dayton, in the Midwestern state of Ohio, Trump said he would announce his choice probably on Saturday, but possibly the day before.  “It will be a brilliant person,” the president said. “It will be a woman.”  Both Barrett, a 48-year-old Midwestern Catholic, and Lagoa, a 52-year-old Cuban American from Florida, are conservatives whom Trump appointed to federal appellate court judgeships in recent years.  The president told reporters he might meet with Lagoa later this week when he travels to Miami. “I don’t know her, but I hear she’s outstanding,” he added.  Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Lagoa, currently a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, poses in a photograph from 2019 obtained Sept. 19, 2020.Others reported to be on Trump’s short list are Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Joan Larsen, Fourth Circuit Judge Allison Jones Rushing and deputy White House counsel Kate Todd.  Timing of voteThe president, in his Monday afternoon remarks to reporters, called on the Republican- controlled Senate to vote on confirmation before the Nov. 3 election. “I’d much rather have a vote before the election,” Trump said. “We have plenty of time to do it.” That is a reversal from the position he took four years ago when a Supreme Court seat became vacant in the final year of former President Barack Obama’s second term.  “I think the next president should make the pick,” he said in 2016.  Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee hoping to prevent Trump’s reelection, said the victor in the November election should make the court selection after being inaugurated for a new White House term in January.  Trump on Monday said there was “zero chance” that Democrats wouldn’t try to fill a Supreme Court vacancy if they controlled both the presidency and the Senate as Republicans currently do.  FILE – Allison Jones Rushing testifies before a Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing on her nomination to be a United States circuit judge for the Fourth Circuit, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 17, 2018.Ginsburg will lie in repose at the Supreme Court Wednesday and Thursday, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Ginsburg will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol on Friday.  Trump’s Supreme Court pick of another conservative, his third after winning Senate confirmation of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, would tip the current 5-4 conservative edge on the country’s top court to 6-3.  The new choice could affect decisions on legalized abortion in the U.S., immigration, health care, voting rights, gun ownership restrictions, religious liberty and an array of other issues for more than a generation.  ‘Ginsburg’s dying wish’Trump’s anticipated court selection has touched off a rancorous political debate in Washington: should the nomination be considered before the election or after? After would effectively allow the American electorate to have a say by deciding the presidential election, which would allow the winner — either Biden or Trump — to make the choice at the start of a new four-year term.  In 2016, Republicans refused to allow consideration of Obama’s final Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February of that year. They argued that high court vacancies should be left unfilled during an election year so the American people can weigh in on the choice. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the Republican Party’s change in position and said no vote should take place until next year.  “That was Justice Ginsburg’s dying wish. And it may be the Senate’s only, last hope,” Schumer said.  FILE – Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen moderates a panel discussion during the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington, Nov. 17, 2016.Trump is questioning whether Ginsburg actually told her granddaughter just before dying that she hoped her seat would not be filled until after the presidential election.  “It just sounds to me like it would be somebody else. It could be, and it might not be, too. It was just too convenient,” the president said to reporters. 2016 vs. 2020″No wonder Americans have so little faith in government and in this Senate, led by the Republican majority,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended his positions in both 2016 and 2020, saying the difference is that four years ago, different parties were controlling the Senate and White House, whereas now, the same party controls both. He said historical precedent has been on his side in both cases. “There was clear precedent behind the predictable outcome that came out of 2016. And there is even more overwhelming precedent behind the fact that this Senate will vote on this nomination this year,” McConnell said.  Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said Monday that voters chose Republicans to lead the Senate in the 2018 elections in part because they were committed to supporting Trump’s Supreme Court nominees.  “We should honor that mandate,” he said, speaking from the Senate floor.  Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, but two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — said over the weekend they would oppose voting on Trump’s eventual nominee before the election.  Trump criticized both lawmakers, claiming they were “very badly hurt” politically by their statements.  If two more Republicans say no to a preelection vote, consideration of the nominee would be scuttled until at least the post-election, lame duck session of Congress. If one more Republican objects, Vice President Mike Pence could break the 50-50 deadlock in the Senate in favor of considering Trump’s nominee.  Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
 
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An insurance and private equity executive pleaded guilty Monday to participating in a vast U.S. college admissions fraud and bribery scheme in which he agreed to pay $40,000 to rig his daughter’s ACT college entrance exam. Mark Hauser, 59, entered his plea during a hearing before a federal judge in Boston held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming the latest wealthy parent to admit wrongdoing in the college admissions scandal. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed to recommend that Hauser, who lives in Los Angeles, serve six months in prison and pay a $40,000 fine. He faces sentencing on Jan. 21. Fifty-eight people have been charged in the “Varsity Blues” scandal, in which prosecutors said parents conspired with California college admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer to secure their children’s college admissions fraudulently. FILE – William “Rick” Singer, front, founder of the Edge College & Career Network, exits federal court in Boston, March 12, 2019, after he pleaded guilty to charges in a nationwide college admissions bribery scandal.The parents include “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman, who received a 14-day prison sentence, and “Full House” star Lori Loughlin, who was sentenced to two months in prison. Singer pleaded guilty in March 2019 to facilitating cheating on college entrance exams and using bribery to secure the admission of students to colleges as fake athletic recruits. Hauser is the founder of Cincinnati, Ohio-based Hauser Private Equity and the owner of insurance firm Hauser Inc. Brown & Brown canceled a deal to acquire Hauser Inc. after his plea deal became public in August. Prosecutors said Hauser in 2016 agreed to pay Singer $40,000 to have an associate proctor his daughter’s ACT exam at a test center in Texas that Singer controlled through bribery and secretly correct her answers. The associate was Mark Riddell, a Florida private school counselor who has pleaded guilty to taking SAT and ACT college entrance exams in place of Singer’s clients’ children or correcting their answers while acting as a test proctor. 
 
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Americans’ household wealth rebounded last quarter to a record high as the stock market quickly recovered from a pandemic-induced plunge in March. Yet the gains flowed mainly to the most affluent households even as tens of millions of people endured job losses and shrunken incomes. The Federal Reserve said Monday that American households’ net worth jumped nearly 7% in the April-June quarter to $119 trillion. That figure had sunk to $111.3 trillion in the first quarter, when the coronavirus battered the economy and sent stock prices tumbling. Since then, the S&P 500 stock index has regained its record high before losing some ground this month. It was up 2.8% for this year as of Friday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq has soared more than 20% this year.The full recovery of wealth even while the economy has regained only about half the jobs lost to the pandemic recession underscores what many economists see as America’s widening economic inequality. Data compiled by Opportunity Insights, a research group, show that the highest-paying one-third of jobs have almost fully recovered from the recession, while the lowest-paying one-third of jobs remain 16% below pre-pandemic levels. The wealth data “highlights the inequalities in the recovery in the sense that high-income workers not only have jobs that for the most part have come back; they also have savings that have continued to grow,” said John Friedman, an economist at Brown University who is co-director of Opportunity Insights.  The richest 10% of Americans owned more than two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, according to Fed data through the end of March, the latest period for which figures are available. The top 1% owned 31%. Possible spending cutsThe small financial cushion for most households could force many consumers to cut back on spending in the coming months, now that government financial aid such as enhanced unemployment benefits has expired. Any significant such cutback in spending would, in turn, weaken the economy. FILE – People form a line while waiting to pick up donated groceries from the Brooklyn Immigrant Community Support mutual aid program at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in the Brooklyn borough of New York, May 12, 2020.Household wealth reflects the value of Americans’ homes, plus bank accounts, stocks, bonds and other assets minus mortgage debt, auto loans, credit card debt and other borrowing. (The figures are not adjusted for inflation.) During the April-June quarter, the value of households’ stock portfolios rose $5.7 trillion, the Fed said. Home values grew $500 billion. Increase in savingsAmericans also sharply increased their savings last quarter, likely reflecting a cutback in spending by wealthier consumers nervous about the virus’s threat to the economy. The federal government’s financial assistance in the form of $1,200 checks and $600 in weekly unemployment benefits also likely allowed some lower-income households to save more. That government assistance has since expired. The amount of money in checking accounts jumped 33% to $1.8 trillion. Savings accounts rose 6.1% to $11.2 trillion.  Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly expressed concern about widespread inequality in the U.S. economy and last week said it is likely inhibiting growth.  “Those are things that hold back our economy,” Powell said at a news conference. “If we want to have the highest potential output and the best output for our economy, we need that prosperity to be very broadly spread.” Yet many analysts say the Fed’s policies have inadvertently contributed to inequality by disproportionately benefiting stockholders. The central bank has cut its benchmark short-term interest rate to nearly zero and is buying about $80 billion in Treasurys a month. Both moves have kept rates on government bonds ultra-low, thereby encouraging investors to plow money into stocks and boosting share prices. Powell and many economists have said that another financial rescue package from Congress would boost the economy and help narrow inequality, because Congress can provide additional direct payments and more jobless aid. Yet there are no signs of a deal in Congress.  Racial disparityThe data the Fed issued Monday pointed to huge gaps in wealth along racial lines. White households owned nearly 85% of total wealth at the end of March. Black households owned just 4.4%, Hispanics 3.2%.Much smaller financial resources mean that many nonwhite households are forced to sharply cut spending after a job loss or reduced incomes. Research by economists Peter Ganong and Damon Jones at the University of Chicago found that Black Americans cut spending 50% more than whites when faced with the same income losses. Hispanics reduced theirs by 20% more. Even with household wealth at a record high, millions of people face the threat of eviction or going hungry. A Fed report released Friday found that nearly one-quarter of adults said their family had received some form of economic help since the pandemic began, whether from unemployment benefits, food stamps or donations of groceries from charitable groups.  Nearly 23 million adults live in households in which there wasn’t enough to eat at some point in the past seven days, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse survey.  The rebound in wealth “is not enough to say that the economy is back,” Jones said. “People have lost their jobs, they’re working less because it’s dangerous and risky and their hours have been cut.” 
 
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The Afghan government and the Taliban said Monday they have made some progress in their discussions over the rules for conducting the talks. However, they said both sides still must agree on a few remaining issues before starting the talks. Meanwhile, clashes between government forces and the Taliban have killed dozens of people in recent days. VOA’s Rahim Gul Sarwan reports from Kabul.
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